Baldwin County cities ready for reset elections

BAY MINETTE, Alabama -- Baldwin County voters have until Thursday to request absentee ballots for the municipal elections rescheduled for next week.

Municipal elections will be held Tuesday in all Baldwin County municipalities except Daphne and Spanish Fort.

As Hurricane Isaac approached the northern Gulf Coast last week, officials in most cities and towns voted to reschedule the elections planned for Aug. 28. Daphne and Spanish Fort held their elections as scheduled.

Plans are in place for the rescheduled elections, Violetta Smith, election manager for the Baldwin County Probate Office, said Tuesday.

"We’ve got the machines ready to go," she said. "Virgil (McMillan, Baldwin County custodian of voting machines,) has to do a retest on them. It’s been more than 14 days since the postponement, so we do have to do a retest, but he is going to do that onsite with each of the cities and have their public testing like they did the last time."

Elections will be held Tuesday in Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Foley, Magnolia Springs, Perdido Beach, Elberta, Fairhope, Summerdale, Robertsdale, Loxley and Bay Minette. Polls will be at the same sites where elections were planned Aug. 28 and open for the same hours, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., according to election officials.

The U.S. Department of Justice notified municipalities last week that federal election officials had approved the new date, Vickey Southern, Foley city clerk said.

"We got the letter from them Aug. 29," she said. "We’re set to go."

The change moves back the date for voting by absentee ballot and any necessary runoffs.

Voters in those municipalities who will not be able to cast ballots on Tuesday have until the end of the business day Thursday to apply for absentee ballots, according to city officials. Absentee ballots must be received by municipal election officials in the city where the election is taking place by Tuesday, Southern said.

Any voter who filed an absentee ballot before the elections scheduled for Aug. 28 is considered to have already voted, according to election reports.

Any runoffs needed in cities or towns that rescheduled elections will be Oct. 23. Runoffs had been scheduled Oct. 9 before the elections were changes.

In Daphne, where one runoff is scheduled between Mayor Bailey Yelding and challenger Derek Boulware, that election will stay on the original date of Oct. 9. The two Spanish Fort races were decided